http://www.calgarymedia.com/fancyshacks

It's for a company that builds large, expensive houses.

It's far from complete, but how does the basic look and feel work?

oooooooooh pretty,
i love the brown frame, love the menu system, nice and smooth :)
colours used are great as well, my only issue is with the main body of text,
is that times roman??
i dont think its suited to this stuff at all.
i dunno why, i think a clean maybe meatier, but easier font woruld be better, making the company look a little more sleeker :)

So far you are doing a wonderful job, but I am not to keen on that brown border- I think the whole site would look a lot more corporate with out it- but thats only my opinion......the drop down menu is marvellous and I agree with souljahs story about the font - you should use Verdana or Sans Serif....
But after saying all of this, I know what it is like to work with a client, so maybe you are following their specific orders?....but it does look like its going in the right direction.

It's a Times New Roman font. Since it's all based on a stylesheet, it's easy enough to change.

The company has no colour palette that I'm aware of. I tried to use colours that appear in their showhome. They provided their logo as a jpeg file too (ugh).

The border is a leather texture with bevel. I'm going for more of 'luxury' than corporate. Normally, I would just leave it clean (white) but I have a feeling the client will like the border. We shall see...

Thanks for the input! :)

Good to see you back here ;)

I like the look of it so far. I think the border works because its not over powering, it would be easier to over do that elemen. Nice treatment on the flash nav.

I agree on the fonts as well. Even though the logotype is serif, the clean face of the nav would suggest the need for the same in the body.

Since you have no palette restrictions, why not a nice blue-greenish palette. Just an idea. I personally am not big on any shade of brown. I am big on consistent typefaces, and my personal preference for Websites is to have sans-serif everywhere. I think "Verdana" would look wonderful here. I don't really like the border, but maybe if it were narrower and not so beveled, it would look cool. The Flash navigation is interesting. Overall man you're off to a great start. It definitely has a professional, "business-like" look.

i love company's like this! they want to portray themselves as rich, classy, and above the rest, but are not willing to pay the money to make their web presence do the same. we have a local realtor that is the same way. biggest realtor in the county and their name is everywhere. they spend tons of money on every aspect of their image, except their website, which is not that functional and looks horrible! i would love to ask them this "if your website was improved and you could sell 2 or 3 more houses from your site, wouldnt an investment into the website be worth that alone?" whats even better is when you get a client like this who will actually agree to a fair price on the site, and then haggle over the hosting costs. ugh.

sorry for the rant...

i took a look-see and wanted to offer my thoughts (hope i didnt get carried away). im browsing @ 1280x1204 on msie 6 in case you are curious. take the following for what its worth. i realize this is still a work in progress and you have not gotten around to everything yet. :)


<title>Untitled Document</title> - needs a page title!
i will second the notion about changing the font. to me, the font you have does not suit the classy appeal you are going for. jeff hit the nail on the head when he suggested verdana.
im not a big fan of the overall border, but that is just me. the bevel on it looks too "template-like" if you see what i am getting at. if you are insisting on a border, might be interesting to see something like replicating a hardwood floor or something along those lines. for me personally, i would leave it off all together and use the white space to your advantage.
contact us should be a menu item on the top. always best to give people the contact method right off the bat. dont make them search for it.
how about adding a footer into the page, with simple text navigation mirroring the flash navigation at the top? copyright, legal, etc could be tossed in there as well.
the navigation is a little awkward. the logo should link back to the home page. when i get deeper into the site, the only way i know how to get back to the main page is to keep clicking back.
what is the message of the site? what do you want users to do after viewing it? looking at this i would think that they are to do something with regards to the belvedere plan. i think the site would be better served with more of an introduction to who fancy shacks really is and why this website is important. keep it brief, specific, and directed towards the target audience. remember, web visitors dont read, they skim so the message has to hit them right away. as you have it here, i dont have any clue what fancy shacks does just by looking at the main page and im too impatient to read the about page (which only covers history, committment, etc). my recommendation would be to reconstruct this page with the company's upn, a few call to actions, and a feature plan (such as the belvedere).
the flash nav isnt bad, but you have to click an item before seeing the drop down, right? why not have it automatically drop down?
i noticed certain quotes are images. why is this? i would think it would be better to define a style in your css file to cover this. that would save the user from having to download another image, plus it makes those quotes easier to change. you could even use random quotes if you wanted with a js file. i only recommend this to save on page load time.
for the items in the content that are links, i would make them a noticably different color. remember, web visitors skim and scan, they dont read. if you make it a point to highlight certain words, visitors will know to click that for sure. right now, the text links are a different color but do not stand out enough.
another usability point: will there be an index page? i normally hate splash pages for a business site, but since you are using flash, i would recommend a page informing the user of the technologies they will need to review the site.
this wont make or break your site, but it certainly wont hurt. have you run each page through the w3c to validate your html? the w3c didnt like your site very much (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.calgarymedia.com%2Ffancyshacks%2F) ;) we do this at work with every page on every site and have found that it really helps catch some things that we normally would have missed. i would suggest taking the keywords in the meta tags and use them as alt tags for your images as well. this can help with the search engine optimization, as will the page titles in your site.
lastly, the alignment bothers me. the nav is confined to the center yet the content stretches and does not appear to follow certain guides. i would either 1) stretch the navigation across the top or 2) better confine and align the content.


dub's standard disclaimer: my word is not the last word in design and development. dont take the above as a list of things that you must implement/change in order to make a great site. these are just things that i have to think about on a daily basis with our client projects so they are ingrained into my head.

i would highly recommend creating a checklist for yourself in excel or something like that. the checklist would contain a list of items that you want to double check in your site, such as spelling, page titles, meta tags, form functionality, links, and everything else that you normally do with a project. before sending it off to the client run your project through that checklist.

hope this helps. :)

ya....what dub said :)

Wow! Dub, this was like a wee book, but I have to agree on nearly every thing you have mentioned, except for this one...
. jeff hit the nail on the head when he suggested verdana. :)
Take a look at my post, which was before Jeff's....... :dub:

Take a look at my post, which was before Jeff's....... :dub:

Sorry mate, I didn't read read your post. Didn't mean to repeat the Verdana suggestion. :bowdown:

Sorry mate, I didn't read read your post. Didn't mean to repeat the Verdana suggestion. :bowdown:
Jeff....It's alright, I am just trying to rattle Dub's wee cage....as I couldn't find any thing wrong with his post...except that Verdana thing, and maybe he didn't read my post aswell, does any one?... :cool:

I usually try to read every post leading up to mine, in case I should quote someone, but sometimes I'm remiss in the details. :)

you know you have a good forum when people critique your critique. ;) :D

you know you have a good forum when people critique your critique. ;) :D
Nicely said...........and sorry OtakuLad for kinda slipping away from your subject.......

Bravo Dub... now that is a critique. :bowdown:

Tons of useful information there, actually i saved your post to txt and I'll check that stuff on my site.

I think I have a lot of work to do. :grin2:

I would add a critique too, but I can't find anything that wasn't covered. :p

~3F

Thanks everyone.

Verdana it is. Guess I'm just partial to Times.

I need to go through and look at all the page titles and add the happy-frame script:
<!--Makes sure entire frameset is loaded.-->
<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--
if (top==self)self.location.href="index.html";
//-->
</script>


I knew this one wasn't going to be W3C validated. From the sounds of what the client was interested in (Flash), I immediately dropped any preconception of validation. As far as search engines and frame sets, I usually just set up my <noframes> section in the index page as links to all the other content pages. Seems to guide those little robots well :) I will add a Flash sniffer that will go to an basic image menu as well.

The logo will be a link back to the fancyshacks.ca URL.

The footer is a good idea. I normally do footers but was concerned about giving up too much real estate (no pun intended) in the body portion of the page. But smaller sized footer links should work well.

The message is "we build really expensive, luxury homes for you". As far as a tag line, I haven't been able to get one out of them yet. This is a small company that hasn't done much advertising in the past. My main gist for the site was to focus on their current showhome, The Belvedere.

I will try and centralize the content as well. I'm testing normally on 800 x 600 so I've been missing that aspect.

The checklist is a good idea. Unfortunately, it's been very easy to forget about certain things as my work schedule has only allowed me to work on this site maybe 10 hours a week.

sounds like you are doing well for what you have been given. i have seen company's like this one not do much in terms of advertising, and then through the process of hiring a designer and building a website, try to reconfigure their position and marketing ideas all at once. not a good idea on their part, but like i said, you are handling it well. :)

I love the dynamic border, Ive never seen that done before, its a really nifty use of frames

I love the dynamic border, Ive never seen that done before, its a really nifty use of frames

:furious3:

Sorry, not trying to bump this thread.
I have a meeting again with the client, and he's hinted at more "razzle dazzle". Looks like I may be reposting a whole new site done in Flash...

Thanks for the border comment, Adam. It was a fair amount of trial and error to get that dynamic border with corners and a leather texture.

What does he want specifically? Why does he want the elements he does? What exactly does he want in terms of flashiness? The current site is very nice. Clean modern and showcases the houses very well. But it has some user unfriendly elements. Just because it's done in flash, doesn't make the design and user experience any better.

Have you asked him what sites he likes, and what about them does he like?

Razzle dazzle? Tell him the train to Hogwarts has already left!

PS: Dayum those are some nice houses!!

http://www.chriscan.com

Thats a similar site, no flash. It even won an award for best site for a home builder. I'm so proud. It beat out all the sites that used flash.

Joel.......Nice looking site and excellent achievement kicking those flash sites